Day: July 8, 2018

Scuba divers in Thailand have already rescued four of the 12 boys who have been stranded, along with their coach, in a flooded cave. And they are hoping to rescue the rest in the next couple of days. But in the meantime, Elon Musk has continued working on alternative strategies divers could use if conventional…

The trailer for McKellen: Playing The PartMcKellen: Playing The Part, a new documentary focused on the life of beloved actor Sir Ian McKellen, covers dense topics like acting, activism, and aging. And the nearly 80-year-old McKellen seems to have thoughtful perspectives on all of it, drawing upon his dedication to live theater, his groundbreaking advocacy work for…

Enlarge / So long, red chili pepper of hotness. This week, Buzzfeed reported that RateMyProfessors.com was dropping its “hotness” rating for professors after an outcry from female professors who said that the rating was sexist. RateMyProfessors was right to do so; professorial competence and perceived attractiveness have nothing to do with one another. The rating…

As the Milky Way was growing, taking shape, and minding its own business around 10 billion years ago, it suffered a massive head-on collision with another, smaller galaxy. That cosmic cataclysm changed the Milky Way’s structure forever, shaping the thick spirals that spin out from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core. Two new…

Global warming could be much worse than predicated by current climate models. Researchers often use records of Earth’s past to predict changes in the future. A latest assessment of past warm periods shows that future global warming may be twice as warm as projected by climate models and sea levels may rise six meters or…

PORT ANGELES — There was something different about the meteorites that fell into the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary on March 7, a NASA scientist suspects. Cosmic Dust Curator Marc Fries told a Port Angeles audience that the massive space rock that exploded in a supersonic fireball with pieces plunging into the Pacific Ocean was…

Life is full of little disappointments. That’s why it’s so refreshing to occasionally see someone do something grand, and just a bit nutty. Like Elon Musk setting up a fully functional production tent in the Tesla’s factory’s backyard, in a improbable—and thus far successful!—bid to hit his 2018 production targets. Like Lyft, the little brother…

Flying has made the world a smaller place. If you have the money, it’s now possible to commute between coasts for work or traverse the planet on vacation. But that freedom comes at another cost—pollution. Airplanes emit greenhouse gasses, which contribute to climate change (to the point where some universities are asking scientists not to…

It was a holiday week for July Fourth, but there was still plenty going on in the security world. WIRED took a deep look at a budding partnership between the Army’s Cyber Command and the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service group. DDS brings private-sector tech expertise to the government, and this new collaboration adds Army technologists…

Once a year, the bucolic grounds of Goodwood House in West Sussex, England, are consumed by the smell of exhaust fumes, the sound of engines revving, and an excited crowd of 100,000 people, all wanting a look at the special cars on show. They gather here because Charles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond, likes…